Chapter 403: Beautiful Lie

She could feel it immediately. The ring on his finger was pulsing like a second, diseased heart. It wasn’t just a piece of jewelry; it was like a drip of pure malice, pumping dark magic into his veins with every shallow breath he took.

The connection was a thick, oily cord of shadow that stretched from the obsidian band, burrowed into his hand, and anchored itself directly into his heart-core.

Eris’s fire ignited. It wasn’t the roaring, destructive flame that had leveled cities in her first life. It was a white-hot, surgical blade of light that shimmered at her palm.

Severance first, she thought whispering incantations older than time itself.

She dipped the flame toward his wrist, moving with the precision of a master jeweler. She felt the dark magic recoil, hissing against her heat. With a sharp, sudden flick of her wrist, she cut.

The connection between the ring and his core snapped.

Her incantations intensified.

The ring on Caelen’s finger hummed a high, discordant note, the obsidian turning a dull, matte grey. Caelen’s body bucked against the mattress, his head thrashing to the side as he let out a sharp, ragged gasp, the sound of a drowning man finally finding a pocket of air.

“His heart rate spiked!” the Head Healer shouted, her hands pressing into his chest as golden light flared. “Steady… steady, Caelen. Stay with us!”

“Don’t let him go!” Eris commanded, her voice a sharp crack in the room.

The severance was done, but the poison was still inside the well. She had to draw it out before it could settle and rot his organs. Eris placed both hands flat against Caelen’s chest, her palms pressing over the center of his ribcage.

She dove.

Her fire magic plunged into his body, not to burn flesh or bone, but to hunt the shadow. She felt the dark magic immediately, it was cold, slippery, and incredibly dense. It clung to his core like a parasite, its tendrils wrapped around his spirit with a desperate, malicious grip.

Eris pulled.

Slowly, agonizingly, black tendrils began to emerge from Caelen’s skin. They looked like liquid smoke, writhing and twisting as they were dragged into the light. The darkness hissed as it met the air, trying to lash out, to find a way to burrow back in or jump to Eris’s hands.

“I’ve got it!” Soren’s voice was a boom of thunder.

Walls of jagged, translucent ice erupted around the bed, following the lines of the ritual circle. The ice was so cold it turned the air to mist, acting as a physical and magical barrier. The black tendrils slammed against the frost, unable to penetrate the absolute zero of Soren’s containment.

The struggle intensified. The dark magic was fighting her, anchoring itself in the deepest recesses of Caelen’s mind. Eris pulled harder, her teeth gritted until her gums bled. Her seal began to throb, a hot, searing pain that made her vision swim. She was drawing on every ounce of her remaining strength, her body trembling with the effort of the extraction.

Just… a little… more…

As she reached for the final, deepest anchor of the curse, her magic dove into the very center of Caelen’s consciousness. For a split second, the resistance vanished, replaced by a sudden, violent suction.

Eris gasped. The world didn’t just blur; it vanished. The cold chamber, the smell of hyssop, the sound of Soren’s ice, it all dissolved into a rushing roar of wind and light.

ERIS

The transition was so sudden it felt like being slapped.

I blinked, the white-hot glare of the ritual fading into a soft, golden warmth. I wasn’t in Caelen’s room anymore. I wasn’t even in the palace.

I was standing in the middle of an open field. The grass beneath my boots was a vibrant, impossibly bright green, soft and alive.

Rolling hills stretched out in every direction, dotted with trees that looked like they had been painted by a master, willows dipping their branches into a sparkling stream, cherry blossoms shedding petals like pink snow. The sun was high and warm, but it didn’t burn; it felt like a gentle embrace.

Birds were singing a melody I didn’t recognize, and butterflies drifted lazily through the air, their wings shimmering with iridescent colors. It was peaceful. It was so impossibly peaceful it made my chest ache.

Where am I? This wasn’t the dark, jagged world of a man being consumed by a curse. This was… beautiful. I realized with a jolt of terror that I had been pulled into his mind.

This was Caelen’s inner sanctum.

I looked around, my heart hammering against my ribs. In the center of the field stood a massive, ancient oak tree, its branches spreading wide to provide a canopy of dappled shade.

Under the tree, a man was sitting with his back against the trunk.

It was Caelen. But he wasn’t the pale, dying man from the bed. He looked healthy. His skin was tanned from the sun, his beautiful gray eyes bright and clear. He was wearing simple, comfortable clothes, and he looked… relaxed.

And then I saw what was in his lap.

I froze. My breath caught in my throat, and I felt a cold chill wash over me that had nothing to do with Soren’s ice.

A woman was lying there, her head resting on his thigh. She was holding a book, her fingers tracing the words on the page.

Caelen was looking down at her with a look of such profound, soul-aching tenderness that it made my stomach turn. His hand was moving through her hair, his fingers lingering on the strands as if they were made of spun snow.

The woman was me.

But it wasn’t the me I knew. This Eris looked happy. Her face wasn’t lined with the stress of a kingdom or the weight of a dragon. She looked content. Relaxed.

She smiled softly at something she read, and when Caelen leaned down to whisper something in her ear, she laughed, a light, genuine sound I hadn’t heard in either of my lives.

I don’t remember this, I thought, my mind reeling. This never happened. We never sat under a tree. He never stroked my hair like that.

This was a fabrication. A beautiful, cruel lie.

“Mama! Papa! Look!”

The voice came from the distance, high and bright. I turned toward the sound.

A small figure was running through the tall grass, his face flushed with exertion and joy. It was Rael. But he looked younger, maybe three or four years old. He was chasing a yellow butterfly, his tiny hands outstretched. Wooden toys were scattered near the tree, a toy sword, a small carved dragon.

He looked… whole. There were no tears, no fear of abandonment, no heavy palace walls. He was just a child playing in the sun.

He caught the butterfly, cupping it carefully in his tiny palms, and ran toward the tree. Toward us.

The dream-Eris sat up, her face lighting up with a brilliant smile as Rael approached. Caelen leaned forward, his arm sliding around dream-Eris’s waist as they both looked down at Rael’s treasure.

“It’s beautiful, Rael,” the dream-Eris said, her voice full of warmth as she leaned in to kiss the top of his head.

Caelen ruffled the boy’s hair, letting out a low, happy laugh. “A master hunter already. Just like your mother.”

Rael giggled, squirming between them, and the three of them sat there in the golden light. A family. Whole. Happy. Together. There was no Ophelia. There was no Soren. There was no hatred, no fire, and no blood.

I stood several yards away, a separate entity, watching the scene like a ghost at a feast. I felt a hollow, twisting sensation in my gut.

This wasn’t a memory. I knew that with absolute certainty. I had never read on Caelen’s lap, and he had never looked at me with anything but hatred, obsession or regret. We had never had moments of domestic peace like this.

The truth hit me, sharp and bitter. This is what he’s dreaming of.

While the dark magic was hollowing him out, while his wife sat weeping by his bed and his son cried in the nursery, this was where Caelen Caldrith had gone to hide. This was the life he had built in the wreckage of his mind. This was the world he wanted.

I didn’t know what to feel.

Anger flared first, how dare he? How dare he dream of a life we never had while his actual life was a disaster of his own making? How dare he play house with a version of me that didn’t exist?

But then, a wave of profound sadness washed over the anger. He wanted this. Beneath the obsession and the mistakes, this was the simple, impossible thing he craved.

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